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World of Warcraft Patch 2.3 Coming Next Week
Blizzard has officially announced that World of Warcraft Patch 2.3 will be dropped onto live servers next Tuesday. It's a huge update to the behemoth of Massively Mutiplayer games, including elements like a new raid zone called Zul'Aman, significant class changes, new questing content in the Dustwallow Marsh zone, and an increase in leveling speeds between 20-60. The full patch notes are available on the official site. "Elsewhere Guild Banks let you keep track of and organize your stocks much more efficiently, the Auction House has been revamped so it is easier to use, and you will be able to pick up daily quests so you have something to keep you from falling asleep as you go back to the same dungeons or battlegrounds again and again. The old 40-man Alterac Valley battleground has been fiddled with, too, so it should now have extra added fun, and those of you around the mid-level mark should head to Dustwallow Marsh for new quests and speedy leveling."
If you'd just do what we tell you and quit yer gripin' everything would be chocolate sprinkles and rainbows! -AC
And what does your ability to get that quip in as the first post say about your lifestyle?
Jhyrryl
My question is how did he finish up his heroics today and still get time to read the article before the Tempest keep Raid in 20 minutes?
import system.cool.Sig;
You won't make it to the very top - the very top is already occupied by the guy who inherited the business from his dad after playing WoW non-stop for 20 years. And I for one welcome our new rich kid, WoW playing overlords. Seriously, if you work so hard that you have no time at all for a little computer game here and there, then you probably will never live long enough to enjoy your hard won earnings. Your WoW playing kids will spend it right up after you die, though.
Quick question. Would World of Warcraft have been so successful had its acronym been something like:
DOAC (Doh-Ahk)
SWG (Swig)
AO (Ayy-Ohh)
EQ (Eee-Que)
Instead the acronym is WoW... just WOW... I mean WOW!! People say WOW inside WOW all the time! Its a recursive and reinforcing acronym that keeps you locked into their subscription plan for all eternity!!!1
Seriously. Go for without it for a month. Come back and re-evaluate the game. You won't love it as much as you used to. It's a GOOD game. Not a great one. Not worth a front page by any means.
And will be glad to use the Guild Banks to fill the coffers of Squirrelly Wrath, Blood Pact, and Care Bear guilds to the brim!
At last I can store all those mechanical squirrel boxes for guild members!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Time you enjoy wasting was not wasted." - John Lennon
Living With a Nerd
Whiny players claim this after every buff or nerf, major or minor. Shouldn't the WoW user base be in negative numbers by now?
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Those numbers are from someone who clearly stated he's only mined about half the available armory data. And the armory only includes characters from North America and Europe, not Asia.
So about 9 million active characters in 2 of 3 game markets, and Blizzard claims 9 million total accounts active right now (and they explicitly exclude closed, expired trial, etc., accounts from "active").
Pretty much lines up, really.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I got a pet little theory about MMORPG's and that is that most players play them, because there is nothing else. WoW was king not because of its excellence, but because of its one eye in the land of the mole people.
Currently my drug is LOTRO, and I can see once again just how bad the game is. Not bad in a conventional "crash and burn" type way, but bad as in, I can't believe I am playing this, kinda way.
But I need my MMORPG fix, and for now LOTRO provides it. But I am looking constantly for something new.
I get the same feeling from other players, we know the likes of Blizzard and Turbine and SOE are yanking our chain but we need that fix and we are forever hopefull that the next supplier of our drug will get a clue and provide a FUN game.
You know what I find hardest to understand? The insistence of companies to add a tedious grind for miniscule advancements. Oh but you got to keep the player intrested, else he will quit playing after one month and then were will we get our money?
One simple answer, THE SIMS
A fun game, that easily spins as much money most MMORPG's, yet it provides player with FUN so they keep coming back for more (Sims expansion packs are not quiet as regular as once a month, but they cost more AND the company doesn't need to provide servers and customer support).
There are countless more games that get endless replay simply by being FUN! I played Bioware RPG's several times for the HELL of it. So why do MMORPG companies feel they got to add endless grinds to keep players hooked? It doesn't really work on myself, I prefer the middle game and once that is done, I move on. Considering that most MMORPG slowly die I can't think it really appeals to that many people, just most keep playing until they find somethingbetter.
Is it just LOTRO that right now is a bit deserted after the EU launch of Tabula Rasa?
Would I recommend trying LOTRO at the moment? No not really, the game is rapidly dying in for the early levels. Everyone is either working on their end game OR leaving for greener pastures. Oh that still leaves a lot of people playing, but if you want to logon during the week, be prepared for some very lonely areas. Same thing happened to EQ SWG WoW and probably countless other MMORPG's I never bothered with.
Sometimes I think the most innovative element a new MMORPG could introduce was permanent death upon achieving the top level. Reach say 100 and you got time for a few epic quests that end your characters heroic journey, before fading away and forcing you to start a new character. Gone would be the mad rush to end game, the constant demand for insanely high level extra content, the need for increased levels AND you would have a constant stream of people in all levels of the game to make newcomers feel less lonely.
Ah well, spend to long in here, need my fix. damnit, load faster I am going into withdrawal here!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The more they take content and put it into instances, both pve and pvp; the more it becomes a pointless game to play. Why play a Mmorpg which has turned into an Orpg? Does it matter that there can be 2k people on your server when you only ever see a dozen or so every night because the game is all instanced?
Then there's the cottage cheese-y-ness they've done with pvp. It used to take some skill, quick thinking and some organization. Now with resilience , other damage mitigation and overpowered healing that can keep anyone alive things like arena matches turn into long grind fests. The outcome of pvp encounters used to be maybe 50% skill and preparation, 20% luck and 30% gear and class make-up. With all of the changes they've introduced this past year, your typical arena match is determined by 10% skill and preparation, 5% luck, 85% gear and class make-up. Doesn't that sound exhilarating kids?
This happens with a lot of mmorpgs. They are released in a form that is slightly buggy and end up with all of these unplanned and unforeseen novelties in terms of gameplay, strategy, interaction. Then after the corporation that develops it spends a few years tightening the cogs and getting RID of the unplanned and unforseen elements as well as anything that gets complained about by the userbase, voila! You end up with a bland, boring game no one plays anymore.
I was a member of a guild with over 100 people and kept in touch with a former guild of 200. They've both dried up and shrivelled out of existence because every patch slowly turned the game more and more bland. Both 'realms' I used to frequent have died horrible deaths and the main cities are ghost towns.
Bring back the wild west. Bring back the buggy, unforseen, wild, insulting, violent mess that was Ultima Online back in the early years. There were no cookie cutter classes. There was gambling, extortion, confidence tricksters, scammers, spammers, raiders, looters, exploiters, thieves, honorable and dishonorable fighters and gangs. There was somewhat of a safety zone in towns. There were no factions, everyone and everything was fair game. There was no one way to play the game, I'm sure people have so many interesting stories about how they or friends played. I had a friend who liked to spend his time stealing useless items. He was a weird looking fellow and a clepto. He also enjoyed running around town naked. He would yell at the NPCs and get angry at the guards when they caught him and killed him. That was his take of the game.
If I wanted to play around in a world where everything gets regulated and restrained and anything that causes people to whine gets the axe I would... Not go pay $50 bucks + $15 per month to do it on a computer, there's plenty of it in a non-virtual world.
The only reason WOW hasn't collapsed like a house of soggy cards is that there is still an influx of new players and the game does have a great unique feel with LOTS of art and content to discover as you level. But once you're done leveling, the game is over.
Liberty.
The churn numbers in WOW is probably greater than many games have total. Yet if every troll post I read about WOW losing players in huge numbers were true what does it say about other games who are obviously NOT getting those players? Blizzard doesn't always do the best job at class balance but they do a far better job than other companies, their numbers attest to this. While I am taking a break from WOW I do plan on getting back in, changes in this patch may be enough for me as I can bring up some other classes and see how the game plays out for them.
Part of the magic of WOW is that it really does have separate classes where the differences are enough to grant four to six different ways to play the game. The hybrids blend obviously, but melee, magic, and ranged melee (bow), all work well and in many cases require different play styles. Magic is the most diversified where playing a priest is very different from a mage just as its different from a warlock.
I have a warrior and to claim that only classes the lead design or high placed developers are being buffed is to ignore the fact that many people with these classes have been waiting for their day in the sun. If what you implied were true the largest number of players would have long focused on Warrior - which is not the case. Shaman get some tweaks now to enhance two of their trees. Yeah warriors get some bennies here but each class received buffs as well as some tuning which tones down overpowering areas.
My beef has been that PvP/Arena gets way too much focus but obviously I am not in a majority as it appeals to large number of players. The problem of course is that these are the most competitive players and as such will be the most vocal. If they didn't bitch then Blizzard would have a problem, that would be a more clear indicator that people were leaving.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why is that every time WoW is mentioned on Slashdot, it seems half the posts are from bitter, pathetic whiners who complain that the game no longer fulfills some need driven by personality defects?
Hey, guess what? We're glad you quit playing. And no one cares why!
Every class always complains that they, and they alone, have been nerfed because Blizzard doesn't care about their class. My theory is that people expect their class to be omnipotent, and when that doesn't happen they complain about nerfing and balance. It's the same thing with Team Fortress.
But all that is irrelevant. Why? Because WoW is fun. That's why so many people play it. It gives a lot of entertainment in their eyes for $15/month. If it doesn't for you great, quit. However please don't pretend like the way you like games is the one and only, or that you've figured out the magic formula. If you want a different kind of game, well go look for one. I hear in terms of wild west EVE Online is a good choice. Shadowbane sounds like another. Hell, if UO is your thing, go play it, it's still in active development (released a new engine just this year).
If you don't like WoW, there's lots of other games out there, so please, don't hate on those that do. I personally think Blizzard has made excellent design decisions. I support the direction they've taken with WoW and indeed it is the first MMORPG I've played that has held my interest for more than about 8 months (DAoC holding that record). If it doesn't give you want you need in a game then don't give them your money. But don't pretend like you are the only person who's important. Many other people love it, and indeed I'm betting many of them like it for the reasons that you hate it.
This depends on what you want out of life. If you want to be a "wage slave", nothing more, then achieving that, in the field you want to work, is success.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I've played for two years, and I'm not completely epicced out, although I have a decent percentage of epics (>50%). Even if I were still in dungeon blues, I'd be ok with it. The game is not necessarily about getting purple pixels, that's just what a lot of people want out of it.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
For us with engineers, Craftable Flying Mounts! Regular and epic!
Engineering: Flying Machine
Reagents:
Adamantite Frame (2)
Fel Iron Bar (30)
Handful of Fel Iron Bolts (8)
Star Wood (8)
Fel Iron Toolbox
Elemental Seaforium Charge (4)
BoP, Req Level 70, Engineering 350+ to make and at least Expert riding skill to use.
Engineering: Turbo-Charged Flying Machine
Reagents:
Flying Machine Control
Khorium Power Core (8)
Felsteel Stabilizer (8)
Hula Girl Doll
BoP, Req Level 70, Engineering 375+ to make and at least Artisan riding skill to use.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I'm only bitter that news like this makes me want to re-activate my account. Although not playing WoW is waaaay more expensive than the $15 a month I was paying. Since I quit a month ago I've spent well over $200 on Wii and PC games :(